-25C/-13F outside is a good time to do some apple wood smoked maple syrup Canadian Bacon!

paqman

My butcher had good prices on pork loin last weekend so I decided to make some Canadian Bacon.

Cured as per the instructions in the book Charcuterie except that I did not use the herbs and garlic; only water, sugar, salt and pink salt.  After curing for a little more than 48 hours, I rinsed the loin with cold water and then placed it in a plastic bowl with some maple syrup for 24 hours turning it a few times.  I then smoked it @ 250F (dome) for ~2 hours to reach an internal temperature of 149F (147-150).  I added a few handfuls of apple wood chips and 2 blocks of sugar maple wood in the egg; this gave me smoke for the whole 2 hours.  I placed the smoked loin in an open bowl in the fridge before slicing - I will not do that again, the fridge is stinking smoke since yesterday!  Next time, I will place it in a closed container.  I sliced the loin and vacuum sealed it with a tablespoon of maple syrup in each bag.

Little Steven

Looks good from right here. Maybe try some granulated maple sugar.

paqman

Little Steven said:

Looks good from right here. Maybe try some granulated maple sugar.

I did that last time and the sugar ended up as syrup... So instead of paying a premium for sugar I decided to just use syrup and I am happy with the result.  This is my best batch so far.  Bold smoke tase and not bitter at all with a sweet touch from the maple syrup.

Budgeezer

Nice.

gerhardk

Looks good, were are you that it is so cold?

Gerhard

paqman

gerhardk said:

Looks good, were are you that it is so cold?

Gerhard

Canada, north of Ottawa.  It is much warmer today (-4C/25F) but I just finished shoveling 12 inches of snow...

gerhardk

We are north of London Ontario, we haven't seen those type of temperature this year and no snow to speak of.  We are expecting night time lows of -15ºC early in the coming week.  I think that is one of my favourite qualities of the egg, you can keep cooking not matter what the temperature is, even wind is no problem.  My old offset smoker went in storage early November.

Gerhard

paqman

gerhardk said:

We are north of London Ontario, we haven't seen those type of temperature this year and no snow to speak of.  We are expecting night time lows of -15ºC early in the coming week.  I think that is one of my favourite qualities of the egg, you can keep cooking not matter what the temperature is, even wind is no problem.  My old offset smoker went in storage early November.

Gerhard

We have forecasts for next week with lows at -28C...

It's my first winter with the egg and it was my first time cooking at such a low temperature.  It was rock steady at 250F for the 2 hours of the cook with pretty much the same settings as I was using this summer.

My only disappointment so far is that I was not able to achieve fall off the bone tender baby back ribs...

Little Steven

Pagman,

If you want fall off the bone ribs try the foil stage 3-2-1 for spares 3-1-1 for babybacks.

They are on sale at Loblaws now.

gerhardk

If you really want them fall off the bone I have a sure fire method.  225º to 250ºF 3 hours meat up, 2 hours foiled add a bit of beer or apple juice meat side down and then one hour meat side up and sauce last half hour.  I think it is called the Car Wash Mike's method.  I have learned to like them a bit firmer so I cut the in foil time to 1 hour.

I thought that you were in the U.S. because you called it Canadian Bacon, around here we call it back bacon or pea meal bacon and it's only when we go south that we hear it called Canadian.

Gerhard

paqman

Thanks Little Steven and @gerhardk I'll try that next weekend and will post the results.